Ambos sick of being used

Sunshine Coast ambulance services already suffering from a shortage of staff are being put under additional pressure by patients using them as free taxis.

Staff have become so frustrated they have decided to speak to the Daily, claiming the problem has escalated since the introduction of Community Ambulance Cover in 2003, which means people no longer have to pay for the service.

“Since the QAS is now not user-pay, we have people trying to use us as taxis,” said one ambulance officer who did not want to be identified.

“We have to go to people who would have normally gone to the GP the next day or driven themselves to the hospital, but now (they) think ‘well I don’t need to pay, so (I’ll) get the ambulance and I may get seen sooner’.

“I had one female tell me that she had just waited three hours in the emergency ward to be seen, got sick of waiting so she went home and called an ambulance because she didn’t need to pay for it and she thought she could jump the line and get straight in.

“Maybe if we weren’t dealing with these we would have enough resources to cater for the real emergencies.”

A QAS spokeswoman denied there was a problem and said the service used the internationally recognised Medical Priority Dispatch System to prioritise cases.

“Since the introduction of Community Ambulance Cover in 2003, the increased demand for ambulance services has been in the higher acuity and critically ill patient categories, not for patients who could have had their condition treated by a GP,” she said.

LMHU regional union delegate Shane Lewis couldn’t deny the calls did not happen because “all paramedics know that they do” but agreed with the QAS spokeswoman that there was no marked increase in calls for transportation of low priority cases.

“But it might be a case of the public still needs to be educated on what defines an emergency,” he said. “Obviously one person’s emergency is different to what another person considers an emergency.

“And the public might also need to be educated that just because they go to hospital in an ambulance, doesn’t necessarily mean they will be seen quicker. Hospitals have their own triage systems.”